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Mark Ritson: Trump’s marketing success shows the power of personality

This article was originally published in March. It has been updated to reflect the results of the US Presidential election.

There are so many different aspects to Donald Trump’s successful bid for the Presidency – the misogyny, the xenophobia, the hair – that your humble columnist barely knows where to start. But there is one topic more than any other that should interest marketers about the Trump phenomenon: his approach to media is electrifying.

Trump out-thought first his rivals for the Republican candidacy and then the Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton. He has changed the rules of political marketing forever. A recent analysis by the Smart Media Group and mediaQuant provides some eye-opening comparisons between Trump and the other unfortunate politicians attempting to beat him to the White House.

For starters, Trump has barely spent any money on traditional forms of advertising. He spent $4.4m between September 16 and election day. (£7 million). That might sound like a lot of money but it’s peanuts in the world of American politics. Hillary Clinton’s campaign spent £145.2m. More than $6bn will be spent on political advertising before America selects its 45th President later this year.

Despite this astronomical figure, Trump has spent a fraction of the money on TV advertising and direct marketing compared to his rivals. Nowhere was this contrast more evident than in the primaries and the comparison between Trump and Jeb Bush. Bush enjoyed only 1% to 2% of the Republican vote before dropping out of the race in February having spent 10 times more than Trump on political advertising.

Not only did Trump win without traditional advertising, he won against it. In the primaries, his main adversaries Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio spent millions on anti-Trump advertising again using traditional TV spots to make their point. According to Kantar Media it was not unusual for $6m to be spent in a single day on anti-Trump advertising all, so far, to no avail.

The reason for Trump’s apparent immunity to attack ads and his remarkable ROI can be seen in the Smart Media Group data. While Trump has spent only $10m on owned media, he has accrued almost $2bn in earned media. To put that in perspective, this is almost double what President Obama spent on his whole re-election campaign in 2012.

It’s not taken long for marketers in the US to point to Trump’s success as further evidence of the power of content marketing and social media over traditional forms of communication. Clearly they have a point. Trump is achieving infeasible success from an incredibly small investment. He is the perma-tanned poster boy for everything that the new media revolutionaries have been telling us for the past decade.

There are, however, a couple of caveats. First, social media works best – as the name suggests – when people use it to communicate with each other. For all the political point scoring and billion-dollar budgets, the Trump campaign is another example of the power of social media when it connects people. When brands try to join in the conversation it all goes a bit awry. “I don’t want to have a conversation with my chips,” as one of my favourite marketers puts it.

The fix for that has been content marketing. Yes, our brand might be fundamentally tedious but with clever content we can create traction and earn untold media. That might be true in theory, but it’s much harder in practice than it might sound. With a few very noble exceptions, most content marketing has piss-poor impact and fades from view with barely a whimper. Too many brands are risk averse, inherently boring entities run by risk averse, inherently boring people. Not a good recipe for enduring and effective content.

Again Trump provides the exception here, or rather his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski does. On the muggy June afternoon when Trump decided to run for President, Lewandowski took a marker pen and wrote a four word strategic imperative across his whiteboard that would come to summarise everything about the campaign to follow. “Let Trump be Trump” were the words scrawled in black ink. In a world of managed political identities and leaders that change opinion with the daily polls, Lewandowski had the guts and smarts to realise that the only way his candidate could win was by being himself, especially when all his adversaries were being anything but.

The Trump story is a case study that should inspire a renewed faith in content marketing and social media over traditional channels of communications. But it should also provide a reminder that these tools work best when the product is a person and that person happens to be naturally, horrendously, enduringly fascinating.

Without wanting to seem petty or defensive, but given you are ostensibly accusing me of plagiarising the New York Times, can I help you with 5 things I say in my column that the NYT does not say in theirs?

First, the one thing both columns talk about is that Trump has amazing amounts of earned media versus his rivals. I freely accept that data comes from the NYT which they sourced from SMG and Mediaquant.

But here are my five points that are not in the NYT that you missed but I am helpfully drawing attention to them for you:

1. Trump is not just winning without much traditional media spending, he is winning against it as his rivals attempt to use TV ads to reduce his popularity. There is no mention of this in the NY Times.

2. Trump is increasingly being used as a “poster boy” for the success of new media versus traditional approaches. There is no mention of this in the NY Times.

3. Social media impact like the kind Trump is enjoying is much more likely when the subject of the communication is a person versus a corporation. This is a key limitation of much social media work and not mentioned in the NYT.

4. Trumps success in generating impact can also be linked to the fact that, unlike most brands engaged in content marketing, he has taken risks and been unafraid to anger non-target segments. No mention of this in the NYT.

5. You can draw a thick line between Trump’s earned media success and the “Let Trump be Trump” approach to positioning by his campaign team. No mention of this position or the link in the NYT.

Either I am going crazy or you are Ro because you dont think there is anything different in my column and I see five points. I am not saying you have to agree with these observations or even believe them to be true – but they are there in my column. And not in the New York Times.

Hi Mark, I didn’t get your last sentence in the article ‘But it should also provide a reminder that these tools work best when the product is a person and that person happens to be naturally, horrendously, enduringly fascinating’. Who are you referring to? ManY thanks, SKY

I think the article should be inverted. The reason that Trump has had success with social media and content marketing is implicit in your closing paragraph/final sentence “… these tools work best when the product is a person and that person happens to be naturally, horrendously, enduringly fascinating”.

Well maybe not the point about the product being a person, I can think about many brands that have had huge earned media success, but more that it’s not the media driving success: it’s the idea and emotion it evokes which motivates people to share and connect with each other. The fact that in this case the product/brand is person, and a horrendous sod at that, is just the cream of the cake.

Mark, wouldn’t you also agree one of the primary reasons for Trump’s success is that he is selling a singular, simple and aspirational idea, in this case ‘Make America great again’?

Team Trump has hit the nail on the head here in terms of a campaign message. This is because eight plus years of Bush and Obama-era economic recession and sluggishness have undermined Obama’s promise of ‘hope’ and the idea of success, the latter of which is central to American culture. So far as I can see none of the other candidates have captured hearts in such a simple way.

This also explains why a lack of policy specifics behind the Trump rhetoric haven’t even mattered…yet. Back in the marketing world, campaign Trump reminds us that addressing an unmet consumer need with a simple insight-driven proposition can work wonders.

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